A blog mainly about the conlang of Ayvarith, and other "minor" stuff in my life...

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Officially, 29.

Well, the day that I dislike the most had passed. My birthday. Not only that, but it was on a Monday. My morning was the usual: going to do the fingerprint. Although I had some plans to go to the coast and take some pictures at night, at Monday's midnight, for the Kuwait towers beside some other buildings on the coast. Unfortunately, I was so tired and dizzy after dropping my friend back home, so I just headed back home to have a nap. I left the camera in the car, thus when I went to do the fingerprint by the morning it was there and I had the chance to snap again, but not into the glass dome (though I wished to do so), but on some other plant on the outside of the building. I had triple shots every time I snapped at it, and in every time I change the settings of the shot, from A-Dep to Av (Aperture priority). I think the best result was taken by the Av setting, with aperture being smallest, and thus I got a blurry background and a focus on the foreground or the subject of my shot.After I made the HDRs at home, which by now are like a standard for my shots (and they take lot of space in the camera and on the hard disk), I had to change and fix the colors to give some effect. One effect that I made by coincidence was that when I changed from the 32-bit format into 8-bit format (usual task to do when you combine your images into HDRs), I changed some settings (without going into details) and it made that dreamy effect on the image. Usually I make this effect by making 2 layers of the same image, and blurring the above layer a bit and blending it as "soft light."One other effect I made with this plant, and it was my favorite, it was the dramatic effect, where the colors and hues give a sense of antiquity and/or drama. Pale.

The image above contains a cut-out of the 3 main shots with their color manipulations. I used to think that HDRs make some twist in colors, but now I think I was wrong. I guess it is all about fixing the degree of exposure and making the details of the object show up equally in shade and highlight. Sometimes I become an addict of something and can't stop doing it, so I hope I won't be an addict to HDRs, or else I might lose chances of some nice shots where equal exposure is not an ultimate aim or desire.You might have noticed already that I changed the email address that I put as a watermark on my images. I think since I put images on this blog, I better use the gmail address instead, specially that this is a blog about the Ayvarith conlang after all.

One of the amazing things that happened to me yesterday, that is my birthday, I received a phone call by 10 O'clock almost from a relative, who got me into lot of troubles before, and this time he was telling me to be prepared to attend to some expert and do some paperwork. Well, it is a tiny paperwork as it seems for now. What makes me annoyed is the fact that he called me on the 17th, not 16th and not the 18th (today), but specifically at this date to tell me about such thing. I hate courts and authority stuff... I have some bad allergy against them, and in a country like this where the law is mixed with myths (yes, myths), I don't find it digestible to be in the periphery of such places. I'm writing these lines while sweating hard even after washing my face when I got back. Now, I'm waiting for some time and then get to some computer with electronic leaves system (the new system applied here) in order to make changes to my leave. My plane is supposedly to fly on 29th at 2:15 a.m., but I found out that my leave really starts up on 30th! I got mixed up with the dates when I started to do the stuff around here. I was really nervous and in a hurry. Always been in a hurry in fact.

Because of this running up and down, I don't think I'm able to hold the pen and write down the translation, but I'd rather think of some events to take place in my story. I'm spreading myself too thin in projects that I cannot finish as it seems. If I do take stimulants to peek up my performance with these, I think it would take me like a week to have a heart attack. Also in the meantime, I sent some scans of my own handwriting to get some analysis. I made an analysis like 2 months ago, and I got some interesting results. I might post the analysis here one day, well, after removing sensitive points that is!

I performed as well one experiment for a 360 degrees panorama and rendered the images with spherical coordinates. I found out that I can make a 3D environment and make it interact with the mouse dragging and clicking, but unfortunately I'm no expert in such things so I can't say how to put it on the web. I think Flash or Java is required here (2 things that I know NOTHING about). After all, still, I made a still panoramic view for my room (which sucks) in a 360 degrees rotation. The images are taken only for a mid-height band and I would need similar work to represent the room completely. Tedious work that I don't need for the time being! But it would be fantastic to let others be in your room without leaving their chair on the other end, right?!

Click to see the full image

The original panorama image was actually 8 meters wide (around 27ft?). You'd need a CD to copy that image in PSD format!However, the repititive sequence of the image is natural since the images were taken in a circle around the room, and hence the repeated door and stuff beside it. Though it would be cool to have a room with 2 doors like in ig castles! One door to the main hall and the other would be out directly to jump into the yard! Weeeeeeeee... (thud)!